Cloudflare AI Gateway (Cloudflare): A proxy in front of model providers with free caching, rate limiting and analytics, optional Unified Billing, and from 3 Nov 2026 required authentication on new gateways. Protocols fronted: model APIs; MCP goes through portals. Price read 4 November 2026: Core free.
Does not front MCP servers itself; portals do that.
Does not accept PayPal for Unified Billing.
Dated facts
Core features (analytics, caching, rate limiting) are free on all plans. (developers.cloudflare.com, read 4 November 2026)
Unified Billing adds a 5 percent fee on purchased credits; provider inference passes through without markup. (developers.cloudflare.com, read 4 November 2026)
Gateways created on or after 24 Sep 2026 log through Workers Logs; older gateways keep Legacy Logs (100,000 total on Workers Free, 10,000,000 per gateway on Workers Paid). (developers.cloudflare.com, read 4 November 2026)
New AI Gateways require authentication from 3 Nov 2026. (developers.cloudflare.com, dated 3 November 2026, read 4 November 2026)
Model aliases that route across a pool of models shipped on 4 Nov 2026. (developers.cloudflare.com, dated 4 November 2026, read 4 November 2026)
AI Gateway added payment for inference with Machine Payments on 30 Sep 2026. (developers.cloudflare.com, dated 30 September 2026, read 4 November 2026)